


Spectrum

by paladinpalindrome



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dwarves In Exile, F/M, Gen, Pre-Quest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-03 08:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladinpalindrome/pseuds/paladinpalindrome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The dwarves of Erebor trudge on, wanderers and exiles always, and Thorin begins to think that they will be doomed to this fate, scavenging for scraps of a stable life, forever parted from their home. </i>
</p>
<p>In the days after Smaug's attack, Thorin attempts to find his people shelter and a new home, all the while unable to divorce himself from the memory of the halls of Erebor. And there are his nephews now, the future, and all the nothing that he has left of their heritage and himself to give to them, and things always, always come back to the gold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One, Fire: an exiled heart is a heart that bleeds

**Author's Note:**

> Written for / inspired by this prompt: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3393.html?thread=5554241#t5554241, because there were just too many good ideas over there to pass up on. This thing has become a bit of a monster and something of a pet project, and I extended it much more than I had initially intended. Nothing familiar belongs to me, and thank you to the lovely anonymous person who prompted this in the first place :)
> 
> Title & lyrics from the Florence and the Machine song, "Spectrum," which is spectacular and my favorite artist to listen to while writing.

_When we first came here,_  
 _We were cold and we were clear,_  
 _With no colours on our skin,_  
 _We were light and paper-thin._

#  Part One: Fire 

Dis was to be married to him for political reasons, back when there were still political reasons to be worried about, and she doesn't know if she can call what she feels for him _love_ , but they love their son, their precious, tiny sun with the golden hair of his father's house. 

_Thorin remembers speaking with their grandfather, asking him to wait, to not marry her off, and of being chastised severely. He was pleading with the king that day, not the man that played with and teased them as children, in years that seem like ages ago before the gold caught his eyes and he turned his face away from them._

_"Do you not know that this is her duty? That we are a line of kings and princes and that it is for her to bear_ heirs _, not dwindle away playing at swords!"_

_Thorin does not always know his grandfather now, in the gold-sickness that takes him, yet that day he recognized something familiarly flinty and sharp and kingly in his eyes. But his heart weeps for his sister, not bearded but as fierce as any dwarf warrior, and he does not miss the glances between Dis and Dwalin as her engagement is announced to applause the following day._

It is long after that when he first hears the name _Fili_ , a name from the North, the name of a prophet, of one who sees. They have been shut out by the dragon and are a wandering, burning, weeping people. There is smoke in Thorin's nostrils and whenever he closes his eyes he sees yellow fire, but Dis cradles her stomach and says _Fili. Fili_ , to see, _Fili_ , a future, and Thorin turns away from his sister before he can scoff and rage at her that there is nothing to see, only death, death, death - death and fire, and old men drunk on gold and not a speckle of a bright future on their horizon. 

He dreams, and in his dreams is yellow fire. 

\--

The child is born in winter, under a waning sun and sharpened winds, and it is a bitter birth. They are again without shelter, and half of them are starving. What little food they've scrounged up between Thorin and his brother-in-law Geldir (and Dwalin, skirting the fringes of their little group, and Thorin pretends not to notice the pain in those eyes) is given to Dis in attempts to strengthen her and the baby. The other dwarves bring gifts too, what food they can spare and warm blankets and cleaner water, and even weak and with child Dis is a pillar for her people, a symbol of life and hope and the future. Yet Thorin cannot say aloud what he knows in his heart, that if the child survives the birth it will either freeze to death or starve. He remains silent, a shadow to Dis' sun, in despair so deep he cannot even bring himself to pray. He only mourns what has been lost and what will be lost, and his dreams, as always, are full of fire. 

\--

The child is born at sundown, under the last pale rays of light struggling to creep out over the earth, to warm the cracked ground and the shaking dwarves upon it. Dis' screams are terrible, echoing throughout their camp, and there is far, far too much blood. 

_Sister_ , Thorin says, and it is a prayer and a sob and a command all at once, _Push, sister_. 

A baby's cries take up the mantle in Dis' silence as she softly sobs in relief. The sun goes down and in its stead is a tiny dwarfling with a shock of golden hair. 

\--

Fili is light, yellow light, painted in sunshine, fair of skin and fair of hair. He is gold, pure gold, and it makes Thorin's heart ache to see it. _Treasure_ , Dis whispers, _my treasure_ , and Thorin looks on and sees the treasure they have lost, the gold that drove the king mad, the gold of Fili's hair, fair, Fili, gold. 

The child is too small; Thorin can see him pale and shaking from where he is nestled in Dis' arms in all the blankets they can spare. The skies pour down around them and they have no shelter, the sorry fire they have stoked sputtering out into hapless sparks. The rags Thorin has soaked with what little water he can heat to wrap around Fili's chest are crisping with frost and unusable. 

"Aren't babes meant to cry?" Dwalin had asked him soberly, gruff demeanor peeling away to expose jagged fear underneath, fear for the dwarfling, fear for the mother. Thorin does not answer, stamping down on the heartbreak building inside him at the sound of another wet cough echoing weakly from the bundle in his sister's arms. Dis has barely relinquished her grip on her son, and Thorin tells himself that this is why he has not held the lad but once. He tells himself this as the wind throws the word _coward_ sharply back in his face, and whispers the names of the dead in his ears. He cannot bear to lose another. He ignores Balin's pleas for him to rest, and turns away from the sharp grief taking root in Dwalin's open face. He wraps his cloak around Dis and keeps watch until morning. He does not believe the child will last the night. 

The next day dawns pale and unforgivingly cold, and Thorin is still, stiffly rooted to a spot, his eyes on the shallow rise and fall of Fili's chest, the blue tinge painting his tiny lips. 

"Thorin?" Balin asks, walking towards their part of the camp with blessedly clean water. 

"He lives." The prince responds, shortly. He does not break his gaze for fear his eyes will spill over. 

The dwarves of Erebor move slowly on, stumbling in starvation and swimming in despair as they cluster closer together for warmth. Around midday their small hunting party catches up with them, Geldir among them, with a small but welcome ration of the food now being distributed around the camp. He and the hunters report to Thorin, all of their eyes a little brighter, but whether it is with hope or madness Thorin cannot say. In front of him, over Geldir's shoulder, Thorin can see Dwalin pressing his rations into Dis' protesting hands, and the heartbreak shuffled between their locked eyes forces him to wrench his own away. 

_Thorin excuses himself early from the betrothal festivities, unable to hold the empty gaze of his sister with her falsely stretched smile. He comes across Dwalin, expectedly, in the the corridor they found as children, the three of them, with little blonde Frerin trailing behind, the place they scampered towards to get away from the smell of gold and wine and royalty._

_"Dwalin," he starts, unsure. He is not an eloquent dwarf, and neither is his friend, and they have always had fists and blood between them to express their anger and frustration. But Dwalin is drunk, very drunk, and the weight of his regret and heartache has settled in his bones and dragged his limbs to the floor. Thorin sits beside him, and they drink from the same goblet, and neither speaks of what they have lost that day._

By nightfall the earth is a little drier, and they are able to make camp in land a little more protected than the open field they rested in the night before. The howling of the wind is not quite so fierce, yet Thorin is weary with restlessness and worry and too many nights gone by without sleep. 

"I'll take watch tonight," Dwalin says, uncharacteristically quietly from where he's snuck up to stand by Thorin's side, constant and steady as always. The prince turns to see Dis flanked by her husband once more, their heads bent together over their silent child. Dwalin lights another fire and the flame burns red. 

When Thorin finally sleeps his dreams are wreathed in dragon-fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note on names ... I was doing research into where some of Tolkien's names came from and came across the concept that the name "fili" is derived from a celtic word meaning "to see," and could have referred to a kin of prophet way back when. At least according to Wikipedia. Now I am no means an expert in etymology or onomastics, so I took the idea and ran with it, sooo please ignore any errors there or in the timeline of this thing hehe. 
> 
> This piece is already written out, I'm just so picky I have to edit and re-edit again and again before I'm completely satisfied and done with the work and ready to put it out there! I've been working on this thing for over a month, so I want to "say goodbye" to it properly and make it the best it can be. That being said, updates should be decently regular. Okay end note! Thanks for reading :)


	2. Part One, Fire: dwelt on dreams

Years after, when Thorin would overhear survivors tell stories of the flight from Erebor (and never, never knowingly in his hearing), they all spoke of red. Red blood, red dragon, red fire. Their voices would never shake, and they enjoyed it far too much: the hero-worship, the attention, the rapture of little ones or younger warriors holding their breath in anticipation of their every word. They spoke of sweat and blood and a fierce, fierce heat. 

Thorin remembers a chill. The deep, potent chill of fear, like all the blood had turned to ice in his veins. He remembers feeling cold, icy terror, of feeling like the fire would simply melt his frozen bones away. He had dragged his grandfather from his gold, from molten coins and sickness and death, and all he could see was white: white hair, white spots on his vision from lack of air, and then gold, lost gold, golden crown, golden fire. 

The centre of the fire, where it burns hotter than hot, is golden yellow. 

And Thorin would never, never speak of it to anyone. 

\--

The dwarves eventually find a more stable shelter, a temporary, sorry home in a quiet town, with a less than welcoming reception. It is not their world anymore, but a world of men, but it means small rooms, and a roof over heads, and there was work in the towns of men, however unreceptive and demeaning they seemed. But the dwarves of Erebor were people of stone: they had fought the mountain, and built a kingdom there, they had lost the kingdom to fire, and battled the earth for a new hold in it. And among the bedraggled scores of exiled dwarves, the new prince of Erebor had survived, small and weak, yet golden, the future's treasure. 

Fili was walking then, tiny, scampering thing though he was, and if his breath came a little rougher and he tired a little sooner than the town's children, then he never let it stop him from getting into scrapes. Thorin found him once behind their tiny forge, doubled over and heaving, small frame racked with wheezing coughs, gasping for breath. He carried him inside, and wrapped his chest with an herbal poultice and poured tea down the child's throat, and he never forgot the way his nephew shook in his arms, or the unbridled steel that burned in the child's eyes when he scolded him for running off again.

\--

Fili had a ranger's soul; perhaps too many nights of close quarters on the road and sheltered walks in exile had wrangled him to a point of restlessness. A trouble-maker, for all his solemn nature, and years later, when the elder's complained about his younger brother, Thorin would smirk and say that all his grey hairs had come from Fili running off as a child.

Yet back then, it was no cause for laughter. Fili had a talent for finding trouble, and in the towns of men it was a fearful thing, losing a little one and never knowing what sort of black heart he might encounter. It was nearing winter again when he landed into trouble in front of a shopkeeper's stall in the village. Food supplies and tempers were running short all throughout the town, and the dwarves had been the recipients of darker looks than usual, regardless of age. Thorin had developed a sixth sense for where his little nephew wandered off to, and his eyes found the tawny gold head in the crowd just as a crack rang out and his short braids jerked to the side from a vicious slap. The stone weight of rage dropped in his stomach as he stormed through the crowd, eyes narrowed to a point, his vision swimming with the picture of a man grabbing his nephew and roughly tossing him to the ground. He was there in a second, angry curses spilling from his lips, stepping between the two. The man was taller by far but Thorin's rage elevated him until the shopkeeper teetered backwards, shocked by the ferocity of the dwarf. Thorin gathered Fili up in his arms and stormed away. It was not until his nephew quietly asks, "where're we going, uncle?" some minutes later that the red flames licking into the edges of his vision melt away. 

Because Fili is Erebor. Fili is the future, his future, his sister-son, and he holds him now without the slightest hint of hesitation and with the foreboding that comes with love, not fear, even as he thinks that he understands now how gold-lust must feel.

\--

Eventually, they are run out of the town. There were whispers of disdain, _breeders of ill-luck_ , they called them, and they are accused of stealing anything that goes missing, of starting every fight, of being the sole cause of dwindling food supplies. The dwarves of Erebor return to the road with a grim set to their mouths and new iron in their souls, and Thorin knows he was not the only one to fear for his kin's safety. 

The road is no place for them, much less a child, and both Thorin and Dis pretend that they cannot see the other's despair. They are attacked by orcs three weeks after leaving the town, and lose many. Thorin is separated from Dis and Fili in the struggle, Dwalin beside him, as always, and he cuts down orc after orc and in his mind he sees flashes of golden hair and begs and begs and begs. 

After, while they burn their enemies and gather their dead, Thorin paces, wildness in his eyes as he calls for Dis, for Fili, with a raggedness in his throat and a dread he has not felt since he first heard dragon wings beating above Erebor. He finds them, curled together, Dis with a bloody axe in her hand and such a look in her eye that it stifles Thorin's cries in his throat. He pulls Fili into his arms and presses him tightly to his chest, their hearts rising and falling together as his nephew winds too-thin arms around his neck and sobs. Dis is shaking, tears falling silently from her eyes as her empty hand strokes the fair hair of her dead husband. 

She married him for political reasons, back when politics mattered and their lives were simpler, grander, surrounded by treasure and pride rather than the desperation of the long dry road. But she looks on him now in the light of the sun and the light of her son's eyes, and she is struck by the weight of the fact that what she felt for him was love. 

She screams at last, once and loudly, a painful unearthly wail, and Thorin pulls her into a fierce embrace. Tears drip down onto a bloody earth and a fair head matted with a fiery red, and Thorin buries his face in his nephew's golden hair to quell the scent of fire.


	3. Part Two, Wind: a warrior in all but name

# Part Two: Wind

It is one week to the day after Geldir's death that Dis realizes she is pregnant. 

She is in the woods, alone, as she shouldn't be, but she is a warrior as well as a mother, and she kneels by a tree with one hand on her axe and the other by her mouth and she is sick all over the forest floor. Leaves crackle behind her and animals rustle away, and she hears a low, familiar voice.

"M'lady?"

She coughs and wipes her mouth, drawing herself up to her full height, even as her heart breaks to face him.

"Dwalin."

"You shouldn't be alone in here, Dis."

"Shouldn't I? I recall driving even you and my brother back with an axe years ago." It is a fond memory, but neither dwarf smiles.

"You were sick yesterday," he says, and his voice is a whisper.

"Yes, well, take care where you hunt from now on so we do not all suffer the same fate."

"And the day before," he finishes, eyes bright and broken. 

The seal she has pressed over her heart since Geldir's death breaks, and blood pours out. She expects to be angry, screaming again, but instead she is afraid. When she speaks her voice is drowning in unshed tears.

"I cannot have this life for another child of mine." 

"I am with you," he says, and it is the vow he was never allowed to make to her. 

Dis says nothing, nods once, and steps into his embrace. Dwalin holds her to his chest in the shadow of the forest. 

\--

They've found a new town to rest in by the time Dis pregnancy is really underway, and Thorin breathes what feels like the first sigh of relief in the past few years as he sees Dis, glowing and happy, with Fili nestled beside her on a warm bed, eyes bright with excitement as he places an ear to her swollen stomach. 

Dis' childbirth is by no means a simple affair, or a painless one, but it is indoors, under a roof, with shelter and a maid besides Balin assisting, and Thorin thanks Aule for every single one of these blessings. He waits outside her room, Fili in his arms as his nephew covers his ears against his mother's screams and asks why his brother is hurting so much. 

"Your brother?" Thorin asks, amused. 

"Mmm-hmm. Brother." Fili responds, face blank and eyes earnest. 

"And how do you know that you are getting a brother, not a sister?"

Fili smiles. "He told me." 

Balin opens the door at that moment, weary-looking yet pleased, relieved even. "Come meet your new nephew, Thorin," he says, winking at Fili. 

Fili shrieks in delight, a golden blur as he jumps off Thorin's lap and dodges Balin's hands to run to his mother's side. Thorin pauses, unsteady, as he remembers Dis' words that echo back to him from what seems like ages ago, _to see_. 

Dis is dozing later when Balin leaves, saying he will give the happy news to Dwalin, but when Thorin asks after his friend a shadow falls over Balin's eyes such that he has not seen in years. Thorin sits by his sister's bedside with arms full of his sleeping nephews, Fili tucked under one arm, golden hair drooping down his chest towards his hand, clutched around one of his brother's tiny fingers. Little Kili is fast asleep, and Thorin is floored with relief as he feels the steady rise and fall of his chest that doesn't rattle, and pink lips instead of blue. He looks up to see Dis watching him with saddened eyes. 

"You know," he mutters carefully, running his fingers through the tuft of Kili's dark hair, "he doesn't look a thing like Geldir."

Dis' eyes are hidden, looking down at her sons. She smiles softly and shakes her head, "No," she whispers, almost inaudibly, "He does take after his father," and Thorin does not quite understand the quiet, secret look of peace upon her face.


	4. Part Two, Wind: my brother's sister's son

Kili's arrival sweeps around them like the wind, whirling Thorin and Fili into a frenzy of something that feels like joy. Fili is incandescently happy, always by his brother's side, and Thorin reflects on the fact that Fili has never been around other children, most of the dwarves in exile being grown, and the children in their previous town often treating the tiny dwarf with mocking cruelty. Fili is rooted in Kili, inseparable from his baby brother, and their little home rings with so much laughter from the two boys that it is startling, and Thorin's throat spasms when he thinks that he cannot remember having heard Fili laugh before.

And when he comes home, tired and dusty and aching, from another poor forge and another day of grueling work surrounded by the eyes and prejudices of men, he's greeted for the first time in ages by bright smiles and there's the feeling of something familiar, something safe, that he gathers to his chest and holds as tight and precious as his young nephews. It's not home, not by a long shot, but it's something like promise and surety such as Thorin hasn't had since before the first days they were driven from their home by fire with nothing but their tears and the wind on their backs. 

It's a cold night, and he walks home with Dwalin, who always accompanies him, often in silence, after the day's work, and they part with words of goodwill and old Khuzdul blessings between them, Dwalin gruffly refusing his invitations to come inside. Thorin always asks, and his friend always says no, and it becomes another ritual between them, other words tacked on to the day's farewell. There is a soft raining falling, not heavy but threatening to grow worse, and the two dwarves are bundled against the oncoming elements and the cutting wind as they draw to the too-tall door of the room Thorin had rented for himself and his sister. 

"Dwalin," Thorin says gruffly, throat roughened by disuse and the smoke of human forges, "Come inside, my friend. Dis will have broth and mead to chase this cold away."

Dwalin stops, eyes drifting out beyond them over the path and into the darkness, a war unfolding in his eyes. 

"Come," Thorin, says, jesting and jostling his friend in the manner of their younger days, "you haven't met the new lad yet."

Dwalin starts suddenly, still not meeting his eyes, and then gives a gruff nod after a long beat of silence. "Alright then," he says, shortly, and Thorin rolls his eyes briefly as he unlocks the front door and leads them inside. The front room is darker than usual, and Thorin throws a log on a dying fire after latching the door, and light begins to blossom anew as Dwalin lights the tapers on the wall. "Dis must have fallen asleep," Thorin says, quietly, he has returned later than usual, after all, and Dis still tires early so soon after the birth. He starts when the new light falls across a small figure on the chair in the corner, figures, to be exact. The firelight brushes over a small golden head, Fili's of course, curled into the old armchair and rocking a small, bulky bundle in his arms. He's speaking softly to his brother and looks up when Thorin crosses the floor. 

"'Lo, uncle," he whispers, smiling, and it still hurts Thorin a little to see it, such a rare thing breaking through young Fili's face, "I'm telling Kili a story!"

"What about, little one?" Thorin asks, kneeling in front of the chair (one of the few dwarf-sized pieces of furniture they could find) and cupping first Fili's and then Kili's face in a weathered palm. Fili's still smiling and Kili is squirming now, tiny fists clenching and unclenching around one of Thorin's long braids that is trailing over his shoulder. 

"About him, about me," Fili whispers excitedly, "About all the great things we're going to do one day."

"Is that so, laddie?" Dwalin asks, stepping forward finally to peer down at the two tiny dwarflings. 

"Yes, Mister Dwalin," Fili continues excitedly, "we're going to go on a great adventure." For all that it's a child's story Thorin feels something settle in him, a curiosity wrapped in a keen uneasiness that he chooses not to address as he thumbs through Kili's dark, dark hair. 

And so they talk and talk and talk through the evening, listening to the tales Fili weaves for his brother and Kili's answering sweet little laughs, and they break bread together, Dwalin and the last remnants of the line of Durin. And despite the lads' laughter and Thorin's rare smile when Fili tugs on his hair and tells him _you brought silver home in your hair, uncle_ , Dwalin leaves long before the rain stops, after shrugging off any offers to hold his best friend's new nephew. 

"I'll not make him ill, I've soot all about my hands," Dwalin insists, and Dis hears it from where she lies awake in the next room, holding back tears and reminding herself that this is the way she wanted it, that this is the way that it has to be.


	5. Part Two, Wind: whatever the cost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATED TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter contains references to certain events that took place in another of my stories, "Honorable," which contains elements of dubious consent / sexual coercion. It is not really necessary to read that story, and it is not treated graphically at all here, I just thought it was important to let you all know.

When Kili is just beginning to talk in cheerful garbled words, they are forced to move again. It is famine this time, and not the ill-will of men, that has forced them from the town, and Thorin is amazed that they were able to stay so long in one place at all. There is no food, and no work to be found besides, for in desperate times like helps like, not strangers, and there is no kindness to be found in the heart of men for the meandering tribe of dwarves. _It is well that we leave now_ , Balin says to his brother and Thorin as they hold council together, _before their anger is turned towards us again_. Thorin is loathe to leave, addicted to the feeling of relief he sees to find Dis and the boys safe night after night. He remembers screams and blood and Dis' sobs and Fili's frailty that marked those early days, and he is afraid. 

"It will be alright, Thorin," Dwalin says, reading his unspoken thoughts as always. "I will help you keep them safe." And Thorin sees his own desperation and determination mirrored in his friend's eyes, and gives the order for his people to leave, a prince yet again. They trudge on, wanderers and exiles always, and he begins to think that they will be doomed to this fate, scavenging for scraps of a stable life, forever parted from their home. They wind like the wind through mountain passes and unforgiving hilltops, and any lightness that had begun to settle in Thorin's heart from Kili's arrival is slowly whittled away. 

\--  
Thorin bites down a laugh for the first time since they left the town at the site of Fili nearly tripping Dwalin up around his heels in his haste, insisting that he's not carrying his brother right. His best friend's arms, smooth and swift with an axe, are awkward and stiff around a sleeping Kili, and Fili constantly jumps up to tuck a blanket under his chin or correct his baby-carrying stance, as it were. 

"Hold his head up!" he explains, not impatiently, and Thorin shakes with laughter at the confusion in Dwalin's eyes as he stares down at the boys. 

"Up!" Fili calls again, louder. "His neck isn't strong enough yet. That's what mother says."

"Does she now," Dwalin mutters, almost growling, shifting again to wind a tattooed hand behind the tiny lad's head. He turns his head to look behind them, eyes seeking out Dis, and finds her staring straight at him, mouth twisted in disapproval yet eyes shining in something like affection, something like want. 

"Watch out!" Fili cries, "you'll trip and drop him, you brute!" 

"Fili!" Thorin scolds, "you'll not speak like that!"

"Yes, uncle," Fili mutters. 

"Where did you learn that word?" He asks sternly, ignoring Dwalin's smirk at his parenting that he spies out of the corner of his eye. 

Fili kicks up a couple stones, wagging his head back and forth innocently, the tiny blonde braids he begged Thorin to put in whipping around his face. "From Dwalin, uncle." He says, blithely, eyes twinkling in the face of the dwarf's glare. Thorin looks at his friend, bulk bowed over a tiny child, with his impish nephew skipping along beside, and he meets his friend's eye and laughs as he has not laughed in years. 

\--

As lightening as the children were to Thorin's mood, and the general mood of the dwarf camp, it does not take them long to sober again in the face of their predicament. It is growing cold again, dangerously cold, and even with plenty of furs and water and supplies they had gathered before leaving the last town, the famine that had struck there was spreading, and they would soon be desperate and destitute again. 

Fili's teeth chatter more often than not, and his laughter was the quietest it had been since Kili's birth. Dis says nothing of their predicament, of their growing burdens or the shrinking food supply, just holds her boys tighter to her chest, and her eyes say everything as they meet Thorin's over the fire. 

He wakes in the middle of the night to Fili's tears, his nephew shaking his shoulder fiercely. 

"What is it?" he bolts up quickly, wrapping a blanket around Fili's small shoulders and placing a hand to his chest out of habit, afraid as he has been for days that his lungs will grow sick and weak again. 

Fili shakes his head, "They're dying," he mumbled, tears clogging his throat, "the dwarf was dying." 

"Where, Fili? Where were you?"

Fili shakes his head harder, "No, in my dream. I dreamed it." 

"It's alright," he insists, drawing his nephew into his arms, "It's alright Fili. No one is dead. We are safe. We are all safe." 

He knows the words are lies once they leave his lips, but they calm Fili enough so that he can sleep again, tucked underneath his arm, breathing quiet and even and unhampered. 

They find two dwarves on the edge of their encampment under the breaking sun. Underfed and weak, faces cold and blue with the kiss of death. 

\--

It had only been two casualties, but two too many, as far as Thorin was concerned, and the next morning they gather a group to trudge through the camp, checking on everyone's health and ensuring the weakest and eldest are the most provided for. 

"It shouldn't have happened," he mutters to Dwalin.

"There wasn't anything you could have done, Thorin. These elements are too harsh for many."

"We have given the sickest care," Balin joins in, "we will have to keep on until we find another town willing to shelter us."

"And where will that be?" Dwalin's voice is curling around a familiar gruff anger. "What town will freely open its arms to a mass of wandering dwarves?"

"We have found it before, and we will find it again," Balin says calmly. 

"We have nothing to trade!" his brother snaps. 

"We have some things!" Thorin growls, "We have the clothes on our back, and we have our hands to work with, and we will find a place for our people, whatever the cost."

"Aye, laddie," Balin smiles grimly, "That we will." 

\--

_Whatever the cost._

He thinks back on those words, his own foolish words, as he faces the smirking face of the lord of the wealthiest village they have come across. 

_Whatever the cost._

He thinks of Fili, of blue-tinged lips, of all those times he was so short of breath, of how short his nephew is compared to other dwarflings, and he knows he will pay any price. It is worth it, he thinks, keeping the untroubled smile on Kili's face is worth any cost to the dignity he has left. 

But he cannot think of them now, cannot tarnish them by bringing them into this darkness as he pays for their security with his soul. It is after, fastening his tunic, and then, regaining his footing on his way back to their camp, when he imprints their faces on his mind until it is all he can see. This has been for them, for their home, a future for his family, so that they will not live out their days wandering and withered. _To see. A future. To see._

He stops eating, refusing to touch the food from that town, ignoring his body's protests, and distracting Fili whenever the lad tries to break off a piece of his bread to press it into his fingers. The lad sees too much and Thorin would save him from this, from more knowledge of the cruelty of the world that he already has seen far too much of. He feels guilty, but he uses his brother to turn the boy's eye, and Fili runs off to play with Kili or "rescue" him from Dwalin's attempts at helping him toddle around. 

He dreams every night, the darkness behind his eyelids more poisoned than it has been in years, and his brittle bones are devoured by hell-fire.


	6. Part Three, Stone: those screaming silent things

Kili's temper is a whirlwind, unchecked and devastating. He burns hot and spitting with rage, so unlike the stony fury and disdain of an angry Durin that Thorin cannot pinpoint who he sees when he looks into his nephew's eyes.

"They called him bastard," he spits angrily, " _bastard_ , Uncle." 

"Kili!" Thorin snaps, "you'll not use those words in this house." Always a house, never their home. Dwarves understood the true meaning of roots, of earth, and no matter how many years these walls have sheltered them in Ered Luin, they are wooden, the severed trees of the Blue Mountains, not dwarven stone. 

"They're _lies_!" Kili shouts back, before quieting under his uncle's harsh stare. While his young temper is frenzied, Thorin's eyes are stone, solid and unyielding. 

Dis, quiet till then, speaks up from where she has stood, so silent in the doorway that Thorin hadn't seen her. 

"Kili," she says softly, and her youngest grows red with shame at the steel quietness and rebuke in her voice. He is a child still, small and towered over by his older brother. Young, but cutting as the wind, fierce and loyal, and inseparable from the elder. "Do you know what those words mean?"

"No," he mutters defiantly, "I don't know what it means but it's bad, it's bad and it's not true, Fili's not - that." 

Thorin is silent, thinking of Fili's pale skin and fair hair, the golden hair of his dead father, of how he is so of Erebor in spirit yet looks nothing like the remainder of their line. He remembers another of Durin's line, long gone and never spoken of, and the memory presses down on his tongue, as bitter and heavy as metal. 

"No," Dis says simply, "No he is not."

"What does - what does it mean?" Kili asks. 

"Pay them no mind, Kili," his mother says, "You are right, it is a very bad thing."

\--

Where Fili goes, his brother follows, whipping around him like a tornado. Dis worries constantly that Kili will be hurt trying to keep up with his oldest brother, but Thorin knows it is Fili who ignores his own safety where his brother is concerned. He is proven right, again not too long after the name-calling incident, and why is it that his worse misgivings are the ones that always come true? It is a scorching day, and the fires in their forge burn hotter than hot as Thorin and Dwalin work in silence, the smash of hammer and anvil ringing around them. A tiny figure comes whirling around the entrance to the forge, fingers catching on the open door that stands ajar to let the smoke out. Kili stumbles in, feet knocking the dust up gracelessly in his brother's old boots which are far too big for him. Thorin looks up, brow furrowed, and sees Dwalin twitch forward violently out of the corner of his eye. 

"Kili?" he asks. "What's wrong?"

"Fili." Kili breathes, "he's hurt," he finishes, out of breath and throat catching. The sound terrifies Thorin before he remembers that this is not like before, that Kili is healthy and sound and strong, not like Fili was as a small child. But it is Fili again, Fili endangered, and as Dwalin's hand lands on his shoulder he tries to assure himself that it can't be bad, there's no blood, it can't be orcs - 

But it could be men, or angry dwarves, and Fili is strong but young, and not tall enough to defend himself, for all his bravado, and terror squeezes Thorin's chest like a vice and freezes him, and he thinks of gold, gold burning, golden fire, and gold lost, and Fili lost, then he sees Kili's eyes, dark and familiar, goading him into action. He grabs his sword, and anchored by Dwalin and his axe, they follow his nephew out of the forge. 

It is not orcs, or men, or angry dwarves this time, but a fall. Fili has fallen through a poorly thatched roof, after Kili had climbed up and found himself unable to get down. They had landed in the middle of a shop, Fili curled around his brother to protect him from injury, and Thorin wryly jokes that offending disgruntled shopkeepers seems to be Fili's lot in life. They assuage the man with promises of work done in repayment for the roof, and Thorin carries Fili away, ignoring his embarrassed protests when he almost falls over attempting to walk on a twisted leg. Kili follows, silent for once, eyes shadowed by long dark hair, not saying a word as he clenches and unclenches tiny hands. Dwalin falls into step next to him, tousling his hair and gruffly assuring him that his brother will be fine, and would have been if he wasn't such a fool already. 

Thorin settles his heir in his arms, chiding him gruffly for the accident, half irritated, half trying to soothe the lad's embarrassment. The boy is young still, old enough to hold his own weapon but not to quite begin any serious training. Thorin remembers when Fili first picked up a sword, how he was splintered by a crushing memory. His dry eyes had met his sister's tear tracks and between them had floated the name that was always left unsaid. Frerin. It is always the past laid upon the boy, be it Erebor, or the uncle he never met but who is carried with him, unknown, in his gold braids. 

When Fili is home, asleep, and out of pain Thorin goes to find his youngest nephew, who had quickly disappeared once Fili had been taken care of. His disappearance was hardly an unusual event, but although Kili was wild, untamed, even grating at times, he was nigh undetachable from his brother's side. Thorin found him curled outside their small home with a mug of something warm. His body was limp, folded in on itself, and his wild hair curled into the spaces around his eyes and neck and shoulders. 

"Kili," Thorin starts, unsure of what to say in the face of the boy's distress. He had become colder, harder in recent years, but the lads as always were his weakness. Fire and wind, they chipped away at the sharp edges of his stone, burning him to the ground and whipping the pieces away. 

Kili raises his head to look his uncle in the eye, with his lost child's eyes drowning in the heaviness of worry and shame, and Thorin is hit hard by a long forgotten memory, of a hidden corridor in Erebor and another bowed dwarf, crushed under the weight of what he has lost. 

The resemblance is so strong that it bows Thorin too, and he sinks down to place an arm around Kili, the other taking his cup and drinking a long drag of it as he watches his nephew in silence. Kili, with his dark, dark hair and brown eyes, eyes he'd swear he'd been looking back into years before he was born. 

\--

He carries Kili to his bed that night, as he had Fili, as he had not done for the eldest since he was a much smaller lad, before he shot up to the height that he bears now, all the burdens of the past and hopes of the future stretched out on his broadening shoulders. Dis is waiting there, in the lads' shared room, bent over Fili's bed as he sleeps. She looks up at Thorin's entrance, and crosses the room to fold back the blankets so her brother can slide her youngest into bed. She breathes out a sigh of relief, wreathed in tears, and leans over to kiss Kili's forehead, breathing in warmth and wind and the fact that both her boys are _alive_. They sit on the edge of Kili's bed, not wanting to jar Fili's healing sleep or his leg, basking in the feeling of surety and safety. 

"You know," Thorin says slowly, quietly, running his hand through a lock of dark hair, "he looks nothing like Geldir."

Dis eyes are steel, quiet and cold, daring him to ask the question. For once, her brother waits for her to speak. She reaches out to stroke her son's face. "He takes after his father," she whispers, raggedly, and finally Thorin understands. 

\--

Thorin hadn't even made a conscious decision about the matter when he finds the words slipping out in conversation at the forge. 

"I've been thinking," he begins, "about the boys' father." 

"Aye," Dwalin says, noncommittally.

So this will be just as painful as expected. He clears his throat. "What I mean to say," he begins, "about _Kili's_ father."

Dwalin's anvil catches on the wrong side of the plate, the clang belaying a slipping hand. 

"Will you tell him?" Thorin asks, the weight of a king behind his words, and they are the heaviest words that have ever been spoken between them. 

Dwalin's eyes are wide as stares at him without a word. The blood has rushed from his face, and even his tattooed head looks pale. His friend is often quiet, but never has he been shocked into silence. 

" _Dwalin_ ," Thorin whispers, ragged, "You know - "

"I will not take that from him," Dwalin hisses, quietly desperate. "I have taken enough from your family." 

"He would still be of Durin, that can never change - "

"He would be a _bastard_ , Thorin. He cannot know." 

Dwalin places his anvil down, heavily, wiping the sweat from between his eyes. Thorin thinks absently that his friend has aged a hundred years, hair gone, ink and sorrow in its place. 

"Do you think that I do not wish for that? For me to know him as my son? It cannot be. I will not take Fili from him, or you, or Erebor even, the respect of his people!"

"It would not be that way."

"I cannot do it, Thorin. Dis has asked so little of me but she has asked for my silence. _I cannot have this life for another child of mine_ , thas' what she said. Fili was hurt enough as a lad, but Kili has had more of a chance than he ever did. I cannot burden my own… my own child." 

Dwalin picks up his hammers without another word and returns to work. Thorin ignores the tear dribbling down his best friend's face, and they never speak of the matter again. 

Dwalin is rougher after, gruffer and colder when the children are about, and Kili grows wary of Dwalin in a way that Fili never was. Fili, who spent his first years on the road, on the run, witness to orc attacks and brutal hunger, knew Dwalin first and foremost as a friend, a protector. Yet Kili does not remember his few months on the road, and has never had anything else to fear besides the gruff, hulking warrior, and so it stings unexpectedly when Thorin sees him start and shrink a little from his birth father. 

Dis twitches in her seat when Kili mentions one night at dinner how scary and angry _Mr. Dwalin_ is now. She meets Thorin's unsure eye quietly across the table, and it becomes another thing that they do not speak of.

**Author's Note:**

> A quick note on names ... I was doing research into where some of Tolkien's names came from and came across the concept that the name "fili" is derived from a celtic word meaning "to see," and could have referred to a kin of prophet way back when. At least according to Wikipedia. Now I am no means an expert in etymology or onomastics, so I took the idea and ran with it, sooo please ignore any errors there or in the timeline of this thing hehe. 
> 
> This piece is already written out, I'm just so picky I have to edit and re-edit again and again before I'm completely satisfied and done with the work and ready to put it out there! I've been working on this thing for over a month, so I want to "say goodbye" to it properly and make it the best it can be. That being said, updates should be decently regular. Okay end note! Thanks for reading :)


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